leia took a deep breath and moved on. Quiet. Careful, slow movements. There. Below her. The next window ledge. Set down on it, but just for a moment. Resist the strong temptation to do more than catch your breath and flex your fingers one more time. Move.

leia went over the next ledge, down to the fifteenth floor, the VIP level, a double-high floor built to give the residents therein very high, grand ceilings. This was the level her apartments had been on.

leia didn't expect to be lucky enough to come in on top of her own window, and she wasn't. But one piece of luck she was hoping for was to find a smashed-out window at least nearby. The fifteenth floor had taken a lot of damage in the attack, and unless the Leaguers had been spending all their waking hours replacing broken windows, she ought to be able to find a way in.

She paused after she got over the last ledge and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that virtually all the windows were blown out, curtains billowing out into the wind. That was the good news. It would be easy to get in. The bad news was that she had forgotten that the double-high ceilings meant it was twice as far down to the window ledge. They had made their rope as long as they possibly could, but she had no idea if it would reach down a whole extra story. It was impossible to make any sort of useful eyeball estimate of how much rope she had. It was dark, it was hard to judge a straight vertical drop, and the rope was blowing in the wind.

Suddenly leia's foot slipped, and she was swinging through the air, bouncing off the side of the building as the rope slid and twisted. She dropped a half meter or so as the rope cleared some snag or another on one of the two ledges above.

leia scrambled as best she could and finally managed to steady herself against the building, resisting the temptation to stop and catch her breath. That might do nothing more than give her a chance to get the shakes, and that she could not afford.

But she had received a very clear reminder that the rope had two ledges to rub against, tear against. She had best get off it as soon as possible. There, directly below her, was some sort of smashed-open window. It would have to do. She rappelled down the wall until the wall wasn't there anymore, and she was face-to-face with the missing window.

She slid down the rope, praying that chance would not pick this moment to send another gust to send her swinging back and forth.

The drapes of the blown-out window billowed below her, and there was very little she could do to avoid getting tangled up in them. She kicked them out of the way as best she could, but they simply blew back intO her.

She kicked them back again, and then again-and then she was past them, just in time to be blinded again as the wind knocked her hair back into her face.

And then her foot hit the ledge, hard enough that she turned her ankle. Never had leia so welcomed a jolt of pain. She was down. She set both feet firmly on the ledge-and discovered that the rope ended just a meter below the surface of the ledge. That was cutting things awfully close. The drapes slapped her in the face again, but she ignored them, and just stood there for a moment, eyes closed, trying to settle herself down.

But there was no time for more than that She shoved the drapes out of the way and stepped through the broken window onto the windowsill.

She slid the rope out from her climbing harness and pulled on it three times, paused, pulled three times more, paused again, and pulled three times more. The signal told Mara she had arrived safely.

The rope immediately twitched and jerked as Mara signaled back.

Being careful of the broken gla.s.s that was scattered everywhere, leia stepped down off the low windowsill and into the darkened room.

She would have to go back out in a moment to help Mara in, but she could take just a minute to collect herself.

It was all going well so far, and, in a sense, that was the frightening part. She was chilled to the bone, her hands were aching and raw, she had twisted her ankle and nearly fallen at least twice-and everything was going well.

If only she had developed her Jedi skills the way Luke had. If she had, she probably could have simply walked down the side of the building, carrying Mara in one hand and swinging her lightsaber in the other-a gross exaggeration, of course, but never mind. As things were, she knew that her skills were too undeveloped and unreliable to put much faith in them at a time like this.

Once her eyes had adapted to the gloomy room, she spotted a knockedver chair. She set it upright, brushed the broken gla.s.s off it, and sat down. So far so good. There were dozens of things that could still go wrong, but they had made a start .

a.s.suming that Mara wasn't involving her in some incredibly elaborate setup, and the guards weren't about to bust in the door so she could be "shot trying to escape," or whatever.

That was a happy thought, and one that inspired her to get up and check on Mara's progress. Going to the window, she climbed back up on the sill. The rope was flailing around most vigorously in the wind.

leia's first impulse was to grab at it and try to steady it, but it was hard to know if that would make matters better or worse. She decided to leave well enough alone. One thing she coutd do was to pull the heavy curtains into the room and shove them out of the way. She got that done and went back out on the window ledge and looked up, watching for Mara.

The rope was bouncing and gyrating more and more vigorously as Mara came closer. In a surprisingly short time Mara herself appeared, coming over the last of the ledges, moving well. Down she came. She paused just over the top of the smashed window and looked down.

"leia," she shouted above the rising wind. "I've got to get down fast. Spot me coming down." Had something gone wrong? leia positioned herself as best she could on the narrow ledge and watched Mara come in.

The rope was clearly stretching more and more. leia would not want to trust it again.

Down Mara came, her expression grim and intense, her hair flying wildly about in the wind. leia reached up and steadied the rope as Mara slid the last two meters or so of the climb down. She guided Mara through the broken window and hurried in after her.

"The rope, Mara said, ma.s.saging her hands and stamping her feet.

"It was getting more and more stretched out. The wind caught it and it banged against the sixteenth-floor window where the guards were sleeping. It'd take a b.l.o.o.d.y miracle for them all to have slept through it."

"Maybe I can keep them from spotting where the noise came from,"

leia said. "I'll be right back." She stepped onto the windowsill and grabbed at the rope.

She could not help but notice it had stretched itself out by at least another half meter. Well, that might be all to the good at this point. She pulled the rope along to the next smashed-out window.

Still holding the rope, she stepped inside and examined the situation.

The window frame was still in one piece, even if the gla.s.s was gone.

Good. She pulled the frame open, snaked the rope through it, and pulled it as taut as she could. She slammed the empty frame shut on the rope and then went back out the way she had come.

She paused on the ledge, just before she rejoined Mara. Was it her imagination, or was there a different feel to the air, in just the few minutes that had pa.s.sed since she had been inside? Coronet was a seaside town, and the weather had a way of coming up suddenly. At least it had waited until they were in off the rope. But would the comlaser mode of Mara's slave controller work with a rainstorm sweeping through the area?

No way to know.

Mara was in the same chair leia had been in. "That climb takes it out of you," she said.

"That's for sure," leia agreed. "I pulled the rope along to the next window and snubbed it off. With a little luck, the angle will keep them from seeing it from the window. I think I pulled it tight enough that it won't bang against any more windows, either. But they might have spotted it already. And I think we might have some weather on the way.

We'd better keep moving."

"Weather? That's not good," Mara said, getting up.

"We have to hurry. So where to?"

They were on the fifteenth floor, past the main bar Human League, and on the same floor where leia's quarters had been.

"Follow me." leia started searching for the way out of the suite of rooms that led into the central foyer for the floor. She fumbled through the near4otal darkness and was forced to backtrack twice before she got her bearings. The going was not easy. There seemed to be a great deal of debris strewn about, and most of it might as well have been invisible.

leia longed for some sort of handlight or glowlamp, but the Human League guards had not been so considerate as to provide such amenities to their prisoners. She considered trying to get the lights on, but that would be sure to attract unwanted attention.

At last she found the way out of the apartment, into the central foyer. She had been worried about locked doors or other obstacle& If the way into her apartment were sealed, they would be forced to backtrack and walk around the exterior of the building, on the window ledgeand that did not strike leia as an attractive o tion. But the moment they were in the central foyer, she breathed a sigh of relief.

The Human League troopers had done a fairly efficient job of looting on this floor, that much was clear. Even in the darkness of the foyer, she could see all sorts of odds and ends flung aboutand the doors to all the apartments left wide-open, the faint, ghostly radiance of starlight glowing through them. She moved toward her own door, Mara right behind her.

leia stopped just short of the door, and Mara nearly walked up her back.

"What's wrong?" Mara asked. "What is it?"

leia knelt down and picked up the small object she had spotted.

How she had seen it in the virtual darkness, she could not say.

It was a little model hover car, one of Anakin's toys. Suddenly it all hit her hard. Her child's toy. Had he dropped it there himself in the midst of the frantic escape during the attack? Or had the Human League's thugs seen fit to root through the children's toy chest in their search for loot? What had happened to her children? Where were they? Were they safe? Could Chewbacca protect them?

Stop. Stop. She had a job to do. For them, as much as anyone.

She had to get free, and set about organizing some sort of resistance to the monsters who had scattered her family. Nor did it escape her that it was a member of her family who was responsible for all this.

Thrackan sal-solo would pay.

leia wrapped her hand around Anakin's toy, around the bit of plastic and metal that was suddenly all she had of her son. She slipped it into her pocket and then moved on without explaining to Mara what had made her stop. How could she expect Mara to understand?

She stepped into the apartment that had been her home not so long ago. The furniture had been thrown about, and the windows smashed to bits. She smelled the damp, cold smell of a long-dead fire mixed with rain, but forced herself not to think of home and family. in all probability the League thugs were already searching for them. There was no time.

She went straight to the kitchen and knelt down by the main cooking unit. There was a storage cabinet under its heating compartment. She opened it up and pulled the pots and pans out as quietly as she could, though every unavoidable clatter and rattle seemed deafeningly loud. She reached into the rear of the compartment and found what she was looking for. Two cloth-wrapped packages. She pulled them out.

- One package was covered with the finest black velvet and tied with a silver ribbon. That one she opened first.

Her lightsaber, a gift from her brother Luke. He had given it to her just before she had set off on this trip.

She rolled the velvet up and shoved it in a pocket, suddenly unwilling to leave anything more behind. She clipped the lightsaber to her belt. The other object was wrapped in much plainer cloth, a sc.r.a.p from one of Han's old shirts.

She hesitated before opening it. But there was no point in not going the whole way at this point. If Mara had wanted to kill her, all she would have needed to do was cut the rope when leia was dangling out over nothing at all. She unwrapped the sc.r.a.p of cloth. Han's spare blaster was inside.

"Take it," leia whispered.

Mara looked at leia, her expression unreadable in the dim light from the shattered windows, she made no move to take the weapon. "Are you sure you want me at your back with this thing?" she whispered back.

"No more than you want me at your back with my lightsaber. But we can get back to not trusting each other later. Right now isn't the time.

Take it."

Mara took the weaponut leia hung on to the sc.r.a.p of cloth and stuffed it in the same pocket with the velvet and Anakin's toy. Her husband was gone, too.

That little bit of torn shirt might be the last she would have of him. But there was no time.

"All right," Mara whispered. "Anything else from here?"

leia thought for a moment. They needed light, and there should be some sort of portable lamp somewhere in the apartment. But how could she find it in the dark -and suppose the League thugs had grabbed all the lamps when they had looted the place? No. No time to waste searching for what might not be there anymore.

"No," she whispered. "Nothing I'd be sure of finding.

We have to move."

"Anybody there?" Mara and leia froze. It was a man's voice, a bit sleepy, and coming from inside the apartment. Suddenly leia's heart was pounding in her chest.

"Magminds, is that you? Magminds?"

The sound seemed to be coming from the upper level of the apartment, from the bedrooms. Obviously, at least a few of the Human League troops had found themselves better billets than surplus Imperial Army cots.

If they ran, they'd make noise and give their friend time to raise the alarm. If they tried to get to their friend upstairs, they'd have to blunder through the darkness of the living room, get up the stairs to the upper level, and search the upstairs bedroom-and it seemed highly unlikely they'd be able to manage all that unimpeded.

Sometimes inaction was the best policy. leia looked toward Mara and put a finger to her lips. Then she pointed to herself and to Mara, and then at the floor.

Stay quiet and sty stilt Wait.

Mara nodded, but held her hand Out flat at shoulder level and then brought it down slowly. Duck down. Hide.

They were trapped.

Han Solo watched as the vibroblade came up through the stone floor and, with a high-pitched squeal, began slicing out a perfectly circular slab. The vibroblade withdrew, and the slab of stone lifted itself up, until it was hanging in midair a half meter over the open hole, a portable antigrav unit attached to its underside.

A Selonian hand-paw reached up out of the hole and shoved the slab to one side. It slid along on its antigrav unit and floated into the corner, where it bounced gently off the wall and came to rest.

A Selonian head popped up out of the hole and nodded cheerfully at Dracmus. "We are glad to have located the proper cell," she said in Selonian. "It caused some awkwardness when we detected that you had been moved."

Dracmus said. "But let us be on our way." She turned toward Han and spoke, still in Selonian. "Come, honored Solo, we must go. Or would you still prefer distracting the guard by throwing buns at him?"

Han hesitated a moment. He had no idea what the sides in this fight were, let alone whose side Dracmus was on. Was he being rescued, or just becoming someone else's hostage? But on the other hand, the idea of facing Thrackan after Dracmus had escaped was not very appealing either.

"I am coming," Han said.

"For a moment there, I thought you were about to refuse," Dracmus said.

"I almost did," Han said as he sat down on the edge of the hole and got ready to drop through.

Dracmus sighed. "Humans. Always determined to do things the hard way. Come on. We must begin to move." Han went down the hole.

CHAPTER NINE.

Getting Involved leia crouched down in place, deeper into shadow, putting out her left hand to balance herself a bit.

Now if only whoever that was would decide he had been hearing things, or that the wind had blown in through the window and made noise, all would be well.

He would go back to sleep, and leia and Mara could get on about their business.

"Magminds?" The voice was closer, more distinct this time, and sounded a bit more worried. leia saw a sudden little bloom of light sweep over them and heard a stair creak. He was coming down stairs.

She turned to Mara-and realized that Mara was not there anymore.

There was a b.u.mp, a thud, from the main room, and the shifting shadows in the kitchen told leia that the beam of the man's handlight was sweeping across the room. "Hold it," the voice said. "I've got a blaster trained right on you an" The light of a blaster shot flared, briefly illuminating the kitchen like a bolt of lightning that was there and then gone. A crash, a thud, and the glow from the hand light died. leia's lightsaber was in her hand and on in an instant.

She rushed out of the kitchen-and stopped -dead in her tracks as she saw the scene lit by the bloodred glow of her lightsaber blade.

There was a heavyset manr at least the remains of one-sitting up on the stairs in his nightshirt, a neat hole through his chest. The look on his face was one of pure astonishment.